Victory Crowning Secular and Sacred Buildings

Katherine Morais ('13) majored in Writing Seminars and minoring in Art history. Katherine spent her junior year studying in Florence and London. She worked as a docent at the Johns Hopkins Evergreen Museum and Library.

This paper will discuss the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum’s antefix that depicts Victory with trophies standing above a globe and surrounded by Capricorns. It will cover the iconography of the antefix in relation to Augustus’ monumental structures like the Temple of Mars Ultor, which was one of the most important temples of the Augustan age. It has never been acknowledged that the winged goddess appeared on the pediment of this temple, which explains her presence on the antefix.